lO 
LAND & WATER 
August ID, 1917 
be the only one, then certainly the close calculation of enemy 
ef(ecti%es and rescn'es will be grossly misleading. If you 
regard the curves established by the Intelligence Departments 
of the belligerents as dead mathematical formulje, the future 
development of which will be as regular as that of a 
mathematical function described upon squared graph paper, 
you will be quite certainly as much disappointed in one case 
as you will be agreeably surprised in another. For the curve 
will never follow an exact formula unless all the conditions 
that gave rise to it remain the same — and those conditions 
cannot remain the same. They include the moral, civilian 
and militan,', the co-ordination of efforts between, different 
Allies, the political attitude of the various belligerent govern- 
ments toward their peoples and a number of other incalculable 
variants. 
They include, for instance, the consequence of movement. 
Were the enemy line to break anywhere his losses would sud- 
denly rise enormously. Such a political event as a sort of truce 
— like that which we suffered for months on the Russian front 
—makes them decline in almost as startling a fashion. The 
advent of a new Ally upon either side, again changes the whole 
problem ; so does the fluctuation of food supply, a good or a 
bad har\est ; so even, to some extent, do the vagaries of the 
i\ eat her. 
Reasons for Calculation 
Well, if all this is so, what is the good of making any such 
caJculations ? Why are the best brains in all belligerent coun- 
tries harnessed to the work of drawing up estimate upon 
estimate and why are those rooms, which are the very brain- 
centres of each anny, covered with mathematical diagrams 
wholly concerned with such calculations and with such calcu- 
lations alone ? 
It is because in any human endeavour the calculable pari 
tiiiisl have the first place. .It does not give you certitude even 
in things so apparently blind as the operations of nature. It 
gives you still less certitude where the will of man comes 
in, and still less again where you have not only the fluctua- 
tions of man's will, but .the accidents of battle, of climate 
and the hundred other things that affect war. Calculation 
IS not intended to give you certitude over the whole field, but 
It ;s intended to give you exact knowledge over one part of 
the field and by so much to reduce the difficulties your judg- 
ment has to meet. You know; by pursuing such calculations 
at least as much as can be known with accuracy of the forces 
with which you are dealing, and it is at once "a duty and a 
necessity to know as much as can be known, although the 
other elements which can only be guessed at and very vaguely 
ludged will have just as much or more weight in determining 
the issue. ° 
If we put the thing conversely it is even more clear. Sup- 
posing one party to a war were to use all the vast modem 
machineiy of military intelligence and the calculation based 
on It, and the other party were to neglect it, there is not the 
least doubt as to which of these two parties would win The 
party which neglected calculation (supposing such a thing to 
be for one instant possible) would fall into a fog and anarchy 
of movement that would determine his immediate destruction 
If one party had identified the posirions and strength of the 
other, wlnle that other had taken no pains to accomplish a 
corresponding task on his side, the former could immediately 
destroy the latter. He could strike when he chose and how 
lie chose. 
And if this kind of thing is imperatively necessary for 
military operations, it is hardly less useful for the formation 
of civihan opinion, upon the strength and sanity of which" 
all mihtary power ultimately depends 
It IS no exaggeration to say that if the record of enemy 
strength, man-power and reserve had been clearly followed 
by the great mass of civilians in this country during the 
present war, we should have been saved those lamentable 
vanations in opmion which have been our gravest political 
weakness: and they are almost equally a weakness when 
they tend to exaggerate hopes as when they tend to panic 
or stagnation. I'a.iiii. 
Consider, for instance, what the effect on opinion would 
have been if the very simple statistics published in this 
journal at the openmg of the year and again last Tune had 
been matters as commonly appreciated by the public as is 
the war map. ~ 
It will be remembered that we saw at the beginning of tlie 
year a total German ration strength of somewhat over s' 
millions : a fighting army of 3 J millions ; a reserve of man- 
power behind this, for supplying gaps up to sometime in 
the present month, of about a million ; with the entry of 
some 300,000 or more of the 1919 class in the later summer 
or early autumn. 
By the beginning of June we had established more than 
I of a miUion of total losses and about a third of a million of 
definitive losses with somewhat less tnan the difference between 
theni returnable to the field in an average delay of 4 months 
What was the coilclusion from these simple and accurate' 
- figures ? Evidently that the enemy had under existing 
circumstances and eliminating, as we are now bound to do any 
probable heavy loss on the Ru.ssian side, reserves available 
for meeting Jus losses throughout this fighting season. His 
effectives would not decline unless the actions determined 
upon by the Higher Command took the form of a continuous 
and vJ!iy heavy pressure. The judgment of the Higher 
Command was against this form of military policy and as a 
consequence a'ny stable judgment could deduce, from the 
figures given, that the enemy's reserve would prove sufficient 
for his purposes up to the latter part of tiie present season. 
1 here is another point, one of detail, in which the value of 
such estimates will be further seen. Among the prisoners 
taken recently at the front have been a certain small number 
o German c a.ss 1919. The interrogation of prisoners esta- 
blished the fact that these few lads were volunteers, and 
that is exactly what the known position of the iqiq class 
as published in our estimates would have led us to believe. 
J he drafts from 19x9 cannot be generally present in the 
held so eariy as the beginning of August. W'c know that 
the first of them were not incorporated at the eadiest until 
some date m May and possibly only a few of them before 
the beginning of June. The period of training even 
lor the most advanced units would not be less than tliree 
months and knowledge of this kind forbids us to build 
exaggerated estimates simply upon the presence of a few iqio 
pnsoners. , ■' ■' 
The truth is that at the bottom of all misgivings about 
so essential a thing as the following of enemy numbers, 
is the natural distaste for close study produced by the length 
of the war, and it is this more than anything else that has 
^rinwlf ^^^/.^^^"^^"t in all our judgment lose its .weight 
dunng the last few months. It is all the more our duty to 
re-act against such a tendency, for it is in the last stages of 
a war that this element of calculation is of the greatest value. 
1 here is another reason which makes it especially necessary 
to follow calculation at this moment : It is one to which I 
have alluded elsewhere in this week's issue of L.-^nd & W\tkr 
It IS the fact that those who are working underground to 
exasperate our patience and to weaken our will largely depend 
upon the impression that the enemy is in some miraculous 
way inexhaustible, and not subject, as are other belligerents 
to nornial losses. If opinion can be canalised into thatchannei 
the task of those who are indifferent to defeat and very anxious 
for peace is greatly strengthened. 
There was published the other day from the pen of a dis- 
tinguished diplomatic neutral, as he was then (^4o had lived 
at the centre of things in Beriin for many months), I mean 
fJ'thSk'h ' " ^^^^^^'^"h^t the German Empire possS 
(I think he meant in the spring of this year), at the present 
moment "Nine million "effectives." This statement vvas 
quoted widely, and I am afraid, believed. Welft^t is' he 
sort of statement which even an elementary public train ng 
m mihtary estimates would render innocuous but which f 
public 'gnorance of mihtary estimates may render very 
dangerous. Whether the author of the phrase was using the 
technical word ' effectives " as a technical word may be 
doubted. Even If he meant by it "everybody b unTform '■ 
he remark was wide of the truth by mo^^e tl4n 30^ r cent 
It was, perhaps, due to some muddling up of the total 
effectives of the enemy with those of the German EmpL and 
at the same time a muddling up of the word " el^SLs " 
with the phrase ■•ration strength." But. at any rate the 
of men to be found in the organised combatant units 
including in their stafi-s and field auxiliaries (f/ mediil 
officers in the field) of the German Empire' ^t t^i 
present moment are just over three million The incor- 
porated reserve with which to keep these effectives ip to 
wHl'S HH .^"'"^-'^^t under, half a million, and to hese 
will be added in a very short time the newly trained men 0I 
^,^'/'^'h' '""■ '^'''*'™ '^^ ftrst months of the Autumn 
s^TaSTtinrmiitir^' ^^^°^^ ^^^ -^ ^^ ^^^ >- 
Those are the facts — enormously different from thp 
timates is es.sential to a sound judgment. ^ H. Belloc 
Letters fro7n a Legation 
' ^aI'ILI" '^' '^'^'^^l^pty in the postal service with 
\ 
